


Pieces In The Wreckage

by AthenasAspis (agentandromeda)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Tales, white bread boys lightly toasted by jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-06-10 11:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15290976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentandromeda/pseuds/AthenasAspis
Summary: Timothy Lawrence is naturally curious. So, when he sees Helios start to fall from the sky, he has to investigate.





	1. Chapter 1

The desert stone still held the warmth from the sun, even as the stars gyrated overhead. Timothy lay with his hands supporting his head like a pillow, gazing up at the moon and space station looming overhead that could be seen from everywhere on Pandora. If there had been a place with skies free from that godforsaken hellrock, Timothy would have gone there and never left. Helios looked almost cartoonish, and it was hard to believe it contained miles upon miles of floor space teeming with diseased zombie workers, hostile wildlife, and, once, an insane Eridian-ascended Dahl colonel that had tried her best to kill him. 

It had been five years since he had last seen Elpis, five years since he had walked away from Eleseer to leave behind the insane man who wore his face, five years since he had left on a patched-together spaceship with a black marketeer and an assassin, neither of whom trusted him as far as they could spit. Sleepless nights were common for Timothy, and it was these nights where he lay awake, staring at the moon as though it would attack him if he looked away, thinking about the past. 

Timothy trapped his jacket underneath his leg as the desert breeze threatened to blow it away from where it lay over his chest. Almost all his Hyperion-issued clothing, meticulously crafted to be identical to Jack’s, had been sold in some market or other on the road behind him, but his jacket and wrist lasers he kept. The wrist lasers were extremely practical–they’d gotten him out of quite a few tight spots—but he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t sold the jacket. After all, the jacket served no practical purpose that an equivalent piece of bandit clothing couldn’t serve. Its only sentimental value was the sentiment of disgust by association that Timothy felt glimpsing his shoulder in a shop window, knowing he was wearing a jacket identical to what that megalomaniac had worn before he had put on the mask. 

On Elpis and Helios, people had mistaken him for Jack. On Pandora, nobody knew who he was, even before he changed his hair and clothes and sported a long scar across his cheek, even before Jack had become Handsome Jack and become unrecognizable. Now that Handsome Jack was dead and relegated to the history books, Timothy finally breathed easy. 

It was rather refreshing. He loved and hated Pandora. Pandora was a lawless, dangerous wasteland where he didn’t have to flirt with every girl and maintain a constant air of confident sexiness. He could go by his real name without mandatory HR disciplinary sessions. After he had exchanged his Hyperion shirt for a more practical one, no one even looked at him with that classic Pandoran distrust of corporations. As he wandered from town to town, looking for odd jobs that only Vault Hunters could do, his biggest worries were bandits and skags, not Loader Bots and Human Resources. 

He looked at Helios. Hyperion and its problems would stay up there, and he would stay down here. 

That’s when the space station started to crumble. 

It took a full week’s journey before Timothy reached some of the wreckage. The remains of Helios Station were scattered far and wide, with perhaps two hundred miles between the wreckage of the two lines that had formed the great H. Timothy’s first sign that he was getting close was a chair, obviously sucked out of some airlock, peeking out of the nest of a bullymong. Then he encountered steel girders strewn across the landscape. Before long, he was passing through full-on rooms, and then, finally, he reached his first escape pod. Someone had punched through the window, probably to exit the craft, and broken glass still littered the ground. Timothy looked at the mangled metal and glass that must have once formed some sort of room, and his breath caught in his throat. There, just beyond a hunk of bronze, was the familiar window that once belonged in Jack’s office. Timothy barely paid attention to his legs crossing the ground and climbing over rubble. He was utterly fixated. He finally reached the window and stood before it. It was somehow still intact, although it now looked out on Pandora from the ground rather than from space. Timothy looked around him at the remains of Jack’s office. It was almost unrecognizable, not only because of the destruction, but because Timothy’s last experience with it had been when it was a relatively undecorated programmer’s office, and he had been too busy watching four scientists get vented out of an airlock to pay much attention to the structure of the space. He pressed a hand up to the glass.

“I’m still here, Jack,” he said, “you bastard. And you’re a dead man.” 

As he turned away from the window, something caught his eye among the dark rubble. He frowned and moved closer. It was a Hyperion cybernetic arm, speared by a piece of steel and spotted with blood.

“What. The. HELL!” Timothy shrieked, jumping backwards. 

He looked at the ground below the arm, which was covered in dried blood, and closed his eyes. 

“You’re fine, Tim, you’ve seen worse, it’s just blood, holy shit, it’s just blood,” he muttered to himself. Even after years of killing, the sight of random bloody severed limbs still scared the shit out of him.

Just as he opened his eyes again, he realized the blood meant that the arm had been ripped away from someone’s torso, and a new queasiness overtook him. He warily approached the arm. He couldn’t look away from it now. 

The fingers seemed to be bent in a beckoning gesture, telling him to come closer. 

He took a deep breath and walked gingerly over the crusted maroon blood. He found himself tentatively poking the arm. He wasn’t sure what he expected. It was metal, like all cybernetic arms. Timothy took the arm in both hands and pulled it off the spike. He inspected it with morbid fascination. 

He had made arms not unlike this, back when he was an engineer, and tried his best not to notice how the exposed wires at the base meant this arm was indeed ripped out of its socket rather than merely cut away or hygienically removed. That would have opened the unfortunate owner of this arm up to a whole litany of dangers, including but not limited to blood loss, infection, acute slag poisoning, Hyperion explosive competitor deterrence security, and of course limited ability to defend against the locals. 

“A dead person’s arm,” Timothy sighed. 

There was no way they’d survived, especially after the crash, and he could only assume the body had been dragged off and eaten by something or someone. He imagined some luckless soul pinned to the wreckage by their arm, desperately struggling as the skags closed in. Perhaps the body had never left this place, and the local wildlife had just eaten around the arm.

Timothy sometimes kept things for no reason. This has been established (see: jacket). That being said, he usually didn’t keep things that were bloody or completely useless. The “usually” is there because of the one exception.

Timothy put the arm in his backpack.

“ECHO from Athena.”

Timothy groaned and rolled over. 

“ECHO from Athena.”

Timothy sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. It was still night, and only the stars and his ECHO offered any light to the abandoned hut. 

“ECHO from Athena.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Timothy muttered. He picked up the ECHO and answered the call. “Hey, Athena. Wow. It’s been a while. Haven’t heard from you in years. How are you doing? How’s Janey?”

“You’re in Atlas Flats, right?” the clipped voice came over the transmitter. Timothy frowned.

“Uh, yeah, and I’m fine, thanks for asking. Wait, hold up, how do you know where I am?”

“I have a job for you. Interested?” Athena continued. 

“Well, uh—“

“There’s an old Atlas biodome near your location. It’s supposed to be abandoned, but I’m hearing reports of activity from the terraforming technology. Also, someone’s messing with Atlas files from there. I’d go, but…well, I’m stepping out of the vault hunting game for a while. I need you to go there and check it out, see what’s up. I know you can handle yourself. Sending you coordinates now. And Timothy?”

“Yeah?” 

On the other end, Athena paused. Timothy got the impression she hadn’t actually planned to say anything after sending him the coordinates.

“Maybe then you could come over to Hollowpoint. To collect your reward. We’ve got quite the ‘I hate Handsome Jack’ club over here.” 

Timothy smiled. It was nice to have at least someone in the six galaxies who remembered him.

“That sounds great.” The connection cut off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timothy finds the owner of the arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna abandon this fic, but then @futuresoon asked for some Rhysothy and i, a simple word farmer, just had to deliver

Timothy had been born on Eden-7, a planet of verdant jungles and beautiful flowers. His family had moved to Janus-2 when he was only six, but he still remembered Eden-7’s foliage like brushstrokes in his mind. As he neared the biodome, his hazy memories were suddenly rendered in sharp detail. He recognized plants he didn’t even know he knew. Blue mushrooms grew from beds of ferns and flowers, all overshadowed by tall trees he remembered climbing, or at least trying to. It was a verdant garden spilling over the facility and the trails leading to it. He walked through it in awe, forgetting his mission, just lost in the natural beauty of a world he’d almost forgotten. He turned as he walked to not miss a single leaf, and it was for this reason that he ran into a wall. 

“Son of a—“ he caught himself against a nearby trunk, turning with a glare to the wall he’d bumped into. The Atlas logo was emblazoned across it. 

Atlas tended to be bad news. The warriors of that corporation were long gone, but other dangers could lurk within. The logo brought up long-lost memories of Jack’s pacing rants against that corporation, angry at their success. Timothy traced a hand across the door with something approaching reverence. Hyperion had succeeded in felling this titan.

He stepped back, and immediately spotted a lever to the side of door. He looked at the lever, then back at the wall. He pulled the lever, and was terrified when the wall became a gate. 

Timothy sometimes had a tenuous grasp of cause and effect. 

He looked back at his ECHO. He debated just not going into the facility. He had had his fill of corporate secrets. After all, he’d been one for almost two years. Why was he poking around here anyway? 

Timothy sighed and entered the facility. 

The inside was smaller than he had expected. It was more a living space than a top-secret corporate stronghold, with a table, chairs, and quick-change station. The ceiling was a glass dome through which streamed the soft moonlight and the dancing green ribbon of the Aurora. 

A soft snore came from a corner, and Timothy stifled a semi-scream, semi-gasp behind his hand as he recognized the form of a man slouched into one of the chairs, fast asleep. He tentatively reached for a light switch, and suddenly the room was flooded in blue fluorescent light. The man didn’t stir. Timothy took a step forward, but quickly returned to the shadows when the man gave another snore. 

The man in the chair was dressed in a casual red Atlas T-shirt that brought out the red undertones in his brown hair. The short sleeves accentuated the barely existent muscles in his left arm and the fact that he had no right arm—wait a minute. The man had no right arm. He was literally missing an arm. This brought to mind the arm Timothy had found in the wreckage of Helios. Timothy dismissed that thought. A right arm without a man and a man without a right arm did not necessarily belong to one another, especially when they were miles and miles away from one another. 

The man’s head rested against his armless shoulder, and almost the whole left side of his face was wrapped in bandages. It then occurred to Timothy that this man was incredibly handsome. It was the kind of thing he would have noticed first on anyone that was not missing a right arm. He didn’t look like much of a threat. 

The man stirred in his sleep, and Timothy flattened himself against the wall. He suddenly realized that the aforementioned wall was in fact fully lit, making his hiding useless, and stepped away from the wall. 

Without warning, the man in the chair snapped awake. He glanced around wildly before his eyes landed on Timothy, who stopped breathing. 

“Who are you?” the man demanded. Timothy cleared his throat.

“I’m, ah, uh, well, I’m just—“ The man pulled a pistol off the table and pointed it at Timothy. “Whoah! Hey!” 

The man’s eyes were wide and the pistol was trembling. Timothy got the feeling he remained in the chair because he was too weak to stand.

“Why do you sound just like Handsome Jack?” the man hissed. “I erase the last vestiges of that psycho’s consciousness and suddenly you show up here? Not. A. Coincidence.” 

Timothy finally worked up the courage to look into the man’s eyes. Or, rather, eye. Brown and determined. 

This guy’s been through the ringer, Timothy thought. His mind turned back to the arm in his backpack. Timothy planned what to say to keep himself from getting shot. Perhaps, “I know I look like him, but, heh, he was never this handsome.” Or, “Hey, I’m just a body double on the lookout for love, if you know what I mean.” Or maybe “Are you wearing space pants? Because that ass is out of this world.” Timothy opened his mouth.

“I, uh….body….double,” he managed to choke out. 

Goddammit, Tim, he mentally chided himself, why are you like this. The man narrowed his eyes suspiciously. 

“I hate Handsome Jack,” Tim added, “if that’s…a thing…you’re, uh, into…” 

The mysterious man seemed to believe him, as he put the pistol down on the table. Or maybe he just couldn’t hold it up any longer. His hand remained wrapped around the stock and his finger floated over the trigger.

“What are you doing here, uh…”

“Timothy,” Timothy supplanted. It was very hot in the room. No wonder the man was wearing a T-shirt. Or maybe it was because of the T-shirt. “Timothy Lawrence. You’re, uh,”

“Rhys,” the man said, at the same time Timothy muttered “really handsome” under his breath.

“Well, I was sent here by this chick Athena?” 

“Athena?!” Rhys exclaimed, and his demeanor seemed to change to relief. “Small world! How do you know Athena?”

“We were Vault Hunters together on Elpis. I, heh, helped open a Vault and defeat the Vault monster inside. It was pretty badass.” 

“Where is Athena?” Rhys demanded. “Does she know where Vaughn, Sasha and Fiona are?”

“Who?”

Rhys sighed and let go of the gun, putting his head in his hand. “Dammit,” he muttered.

Timothy was surprised Rhys trusted him that immediately. He added “trusting” to his mental list of Rhys attributes. It was, so far, the only entry besides “missing an arm” and “holy shit how is this guy even alive on Pandora.”

“Is anyone else here?” Timothy asked.

Rhys gave a despairing shrug that Timothy interpreted as a no.

“Fell free to look around,” Rhys said. “Just don’t mess with my stuff, ok? I’ll just be here…bleeding…”

“Athena just wanted to know if anyone was here,” Timothy replied. “I don’t need to mess with your stuff.”

Rhys looked like he wanted to say something. He looked like he really wanted to say something. But then Timothy realized what he’d mistaken for despair was something more akin to panic. Something about Timothy was putting Rhys on edge.

“Are you okay?” Timothy asked. “Those wounds look recent, and you don’t look so good. I’ve got a few vials if you need them. I’m trained in first aid; I can stick ‘em in you.” He inwardly cringed at his awkward phrasing.

Rhys reacted far more strongly to that than Timothy had expected. He grabbed the gun, sprung out of the chair with unexpected speed, and scrambled backwards, leaning against the console for support. His breathing grated, fast and panicked, against the somber nighttime silence. Timothy put his hands up in surrender.

“Sorry!” He didn’t know what else to say. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that in like, a weird way, it’s just that I was Jack for a long time, and I had to make innuendos about literally everything. It was hell. Hyperion sucked.”

Rhys gave a delirious little chuckle.

“What do you want from me, Timothy?” he demanded. “Here to kill me?”

“What? No! I’m just here to find out who was using the facility, but now that I’m here, well, buddy, you need help. You’re gonna die if you carry on like this.” 

Timothy’s brain screamed at him to abort mission. Caring about people he’d just met had never worked out well for him. But again his heart repeated that this one was different. Rhys slowly slid back into the chair with a scowl of defiance.

“I’m fine! Everything’s fine. Just gotta build a new arm…and a new eye…and not die of sepsis…”

Timothy sat down across the table from him.

“I don’t really have anywhere to go,” he confessed. “I’ve just been going from mission to mission since I ran away from Helios. And you need someone to make sure you don’t die.” He shrugged. “We could help each other.”

Rhys tried to cross his arms and made a regretful gesture as he realized he only possessed one arm. Before Rhys could say anything, Timothy took the arm out of his backpack. Rhys’s eyes widened in recognition.

“Is this yours?”

“Throw it away,” Rhys growled immediately. “That belongs in the trash.”

Timothy shrugged and put it back in his pack. He added “apparently hated own arm so much he ripped it off” to his Rhys attributes list.

“Look,” Rhys said, “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve had Handsome Jack’s voice in my head for long enough, and I just don’t trust you! And I am perfectly fine on my own!”

Timothy took a closer look. Rhys's skin was pallid and sweating, and Timothy’s ECHO informed him that the man was running a dangerously high fever. He ran a scan. Apparently he had two torn out cybernetic implants, one of which was connected to his brain. Timothy underlined the “miracle to be alive” entry on the Rhys attribute list. And he underlined it again. But he wouldn’t be alive for long without help; work and activity would only exacerbate the fever, and judging from the mess of electronics on the table, Rhys wasn’t taking any days off.

“Your temperature is 101 degrees,” Timothy informed him. “I can download a different vocal modifier, see?” He switched the voice modifier to a generic AI male voice. Computerized, but not Handsome Jack. “Let me help you.”

Rhys looked a little relieved at the voice switch. He wearily ran a hand over his face. 

He wasn’t himself.

Timothy had only just met Rhys, but he knew the man had been far different not too long before. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on, just years of watching posers and pretenders, years of seeing Pandora eat away at people until there was nothing left, years of change while he stayed the same. 

“Okay,” Rhys said quietly. No “don’t try anything or I’ll kill you.” No “don’t screw me over.” No distrust, no apprehension, just a weariness that was giving in to the desire to no longer be alone. 

Rhys looked out the window. “Now let me get back to sleep.”

Timothy chuckled and draped himself across the chair, mirroring Rhys’s posture. They would have plenty to talk about in the morning.


End file.
